Ladybug Summer by R.F.

My eleventh summer was one of my best. Fifth grade at a new school was behind me, along with much misery. My best friend had moved from a nearby town to only five minutes away, and my dad had bought us passes to the local Country Club pool. Life was good!

The fenced in pool was surrounded by a golf course, and several green bushes lined the fence. Bugs of all sorts managed to find their way into the pool, usually discovered long dead. My friend and I mourned their passing, as we tried to love all of God's creatures. But one particular day as I surfaced from from an underwater tea party, I noticed a ladybug floating on the water. I scooped it up and put it on the warm concrete by the pool ledge, only to notice another ladybug swimming unhappily along. And another; and another.

“Look at all the ladybugs!” my friend shouted from across the pool. There were hundreds of the red and black creatures, floating on the water's surface, doomed unless my friend and I came to their rescue. We began hurriedly scooping them and depositing them on the dry ground, yelling excitedly at each other when one looked good or flew away.

“Where did they come from,” I wondered to myself. Perhaps a recent hatch on the nearby bushes? The amount made me think that someone had deliberately dumped them into the pool, but who could be so cruel? As I looked around, I realized that no one at the pool that day could be. Nearly everyone there had joined my friend and my crusade to save the ladybugs. Fathers and their water-winged children scooped and deposited; teenagers in colorful bikinis put down their bottles of tanning oil and leaned carefully over the pool's edge; grandparents in their permanently-pruned skins pointed out the bugs to whoever was nearest. The entire pool community, mostly unknown to one another before, had joined together that day to rescue the tiny, helpless ladybug victims. I had to pause to soak in the scene, my heart swelling with gratitude and pride.

After all the ladybugs were rescued or laid to rest, my friend and I sat on our beach towels, basking in the warmth of the sun, and also the feeling that we were heroes. Perhaps no one's life had been permanently changed, but for that brief hour several strangers had come together and done something good for the world.